Hot air rework doubles as an herbal bag vaporizer

This hot air rework station is being used for more than just soldering surface mount components. Since it has settings for temperature and airflow [BrokeHippieTech] figured it would work as a bag vaporizer. In the video after the break they show off the custom parts and then take it though and herbal blend bag fill.

The hot air station comes with several different tips. The smallest one was used to mount a vaporizer bowl using high-temperature JB Weld. On the output side of the bowl a metal stem was also affixed to interface with the mouthpiece of a vaporizer bag. The heat from the rework station brings the herbs just below the combustion point, releasing the active ingredients without including the harmful byproducts associated with smoking.

We’re putting this one under medical hacks because we hope it’s being used responsibly and legally. As with the last vaporizer build we looked at, we have concerns about what else the apparatus may be putting into the collected gases.

I see you (HaD Team) have recently started to comment on comments. Good, I hink this will improve the site like recent “don’t hate” post. Anyone still remembers this? Maybe. But single post will not work or long, you really need to constantly educate people, this is just sad consequence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September.

If I make a video on how to strip the guts from a light bulb and use a kitchen stove to fashion a meth pipe out of it, does that make it a hack? Maybe, but does it belong here? Come on HaD this crap belongs on one of the sites I would be too embarrassed to share a link with friends/family. How many adults are browsing this site with there kids having to explain why you are consistently posting drug paraphernalia as “hacks”. I agree that dope feens can concoct drugs and utensils from almost anything. Is that something most people even want to do or care about? I think not. Please HaD start doing background checks before hiring writers. Certainly there are plenty out there to choose from. Fire these crack heads and send them back to high times or whatever!

Just like the beer hacks, right? Whether you like it or not, cannabis is becoming a socially acceptable recreational substance. It’s legalized in two states (I understand the issue with federal law and current treaties, I don’t care to go into it). If you have an issue being judged because the sites you’re reading very seldom make reference to cannabis, perhaps you should reconsider who it is that you spend your time around.

Here’s how your logic comes off:
“What, you’re reading a news site that mentioned murder and rape? Well, I don’t want to be associated with murder and rape so…”

Also, as a consumer of fine ganj, I have to say that I LOVE seeing the sous vide hacks. Nothing else gets that dry mouth watering. This totally meshes with that and, frankly, I find your phobia a little disheartening.

I know this is SUPER old, but…
I was sitting here wondering if I was the 1st person to think of using a hot air rework station to vape cannabis (knew there was no way I was, still thinking of being the 1st to figure out how to take a dab while scuba diving though ;) ) so I Googled it and came across this post.

I don’t think I’ve visited this site before (no idea how that’s possible, I “hack” nearly everything I have to make it my ‘own’) but this comment right here^, in reply to a very common and ignorant response to cannabis, just made me a fan of Chris and this site.

I don’t have any evidence other than the smell, but I believe that my barber has used the heating element of his hairdryer for similar purposes. And before vaping was even a thing, there were a million crazy Rube-Goldberg ways to get high.

These comments are a reflection of many posts. Let me explain. This site used to be very cool and included hacks for all kinds of random things long before it became popular on YouTube, before YouTube was even popular. Then the site hit hard times, some of the staff begged for the opportunity to buy the site, they did find raising and bought it. Then the whole site went to shit. Every “hack” was some ripoff from High Times magazine for new ways to smoke dope. They couldn’t see past the hash pipe to realize the majority of their viewers had ambitions other than drug abuse. They turned a cool site into NSFW literally.

I’ve got a similar hot air station. If your herbs inexplicably give you the munchies, don’t try using it to caramelize your crème brûlée. Even on the lowest setting it blows the sugar all over the place.

I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use this for culinary purposes. Maybe not all herbs would work as well, but the general purpose is to evaporate aromatic compounds without having to overheat the material (aka burn).

On a episode of iron chef, one of the contestants did that, and placed the smoke in a covered dish so when they opened it they would get the smell, He also mentioned he had a hard time getting the vaporizer through customs or something like that. :P Can’t remember the Chefs name, I’ve seen his stuff before, he tends to do really sciencey stuff with the food he makes.

I have a hot air rework station very similar to that one, except mine is only the hot air portion. I decided to go with a dedicated model rather than air and iron combo pack because I already like my soldering iron.

I guess I am pretty thick as I read the headline and then started watching the video expecting this to be used in the kitchen for cooking… I guess I didn’t expect something like this posted here.

I would be careful assuming that a cheap hot air rework station puts out air that is safe for direct inhalation. These things are usually put together with interesting materials that are almost definitely not food grade.

Seriously, without knowing how the heating element is designed and what its made out of (probably ceramic tube with nichrome wrapped around it) i would never want to inhale anything this thing is heating. Cheap stuff made in china, which im sure where this rework station came from, can be full of all sorts of nasties which are probably getting vaped as well! Best to use a heat rated glass and apply heat externally via a heat gun or lighter and not inhale the heating gasses themselves.

You can knock one up with a soldering iron, a glass jar and some tubing. Maybe 10-15 Euros. Doesn’t even need to be temperature-controlled, just switch it off when the vapour’s all done. Doesn’t matter if the gear goes on to burn, the good stuff’s already in vapour form, undamaged.

I made one years ago like that, the tiniest puff would blow your head off. 10x stronger than actually setting fire to yr drugs. I have since retired.

Using JB Weld with your smoking and vape equipment is not a good idea…
Read “SECTION 8 – Exposure Controls and Personal Protection” of the MSDS…
This is not a new idea and there are many who have used this exact method before.

This is not a hack. It is just another example of what lengths ‘herbal’ heads will go to to get high. It is dangerous to inhale air from a hot air rework station. And smoking any drug will make you stupid.

I am disappointed in Hackaday. Most of your post are inspirational and add to a better understanding of the world. This hack, if used as designed, takes away from society.

pot has been proven to promote regenerative brain cell growth in the memory center of the brain, it makes you smarter, not stupid. you would know this if you did some actual reading instead of subscribing to old fashioned ways of thinking. maybe you could use a few puffs yourself to enlighten your mind.

AHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry, are you kidding me? Cannabis makes you /smarter/? Citation severely needed. Keeping tell yourself that buddy. Why can’t potheads just say “I like to get high.” It always has to be some bullshit about making you smarter, opening your mind, or some other kind of idiocy.

“…releasing the active ingredients without including the harmful byproducts…” – haha.
Do you care to share the study you read this in? I have two, if I can find them, that correlate weed use with reduced cognitive function when used below 18 or so, and another study linking it to poorer performance in the education system.

Correlation is a two-way street, it is entirely possible that people who do poorly in the educational system are more likely to smoke pot, not the other way around. Studies also tie long term pot smoking starting in childhood to psychopathic and antisocial behavior later in life, but one theory is that people already inclined towards these behavioral traits are self-medicating with pot. Most statistical studies don’t necessarily give clear answers, merely correlation, some can model for causal inference, but this should not be assumed. In response to the earlier comment, I seriously doubt that pot “makes you smarter”. It does seem to help people to “forget”, which may be a positive thing (e.g. in the case of PTSD and veterans).

Has anyone ever thought about selling “pot balloons”? Maybe adding a valve so that you can take multiple hits as needed. I can’t imagine the police having any way to test them. Add some helium and they won’t even have a way to weigh how much contraband you have.

Helium itself isn’t going to cause any damage to your lungs: it’s a Nobel gas, and essentially inert. In fact, it’s used in SCUBA breathing gas blends (Helix, trimix, and heliair) because at depth it doesn’t have the narcotic effects of nitrogen. The only problem with the above solution is the fact your breathing an oxygen deficient gas unless you add oxygen.

Perhaps BrokeHippieTech wouldn’t be so broke if he wasn’t such a doper.

A little smoke every now and then isn’t bad, but when you start designing special tools just to get higher (or make it easier/quicker/safer), you’ve past the line of recreation and have a serious problem.

I keep a special custom etched frosty mug just for beers. Have I crossed some kind of “vonskippy boundary of acceptable use of recreational material preperation and consumption?” All joking aside, I probably do have a problem.

@Caleb – At first I thought “don’t be stupid”, but after thinking about it a bit, you make a valid point, is there a line, and if so, what defines that line (my habits vs yours, legal vs illegal, what?). So snarky reply or not, it’s a interesting point to consider.

I would wager to say it is not making something specific to drug consumption (be it illegal or not) that is itself indicative of a problem, but when your desire to consume it overpowers making sane choices concerning your health and safety. In Caleb’s example, his beer mug was something that probably required some sort of critical thought or conscious decision. Conversely, if he designed some way to extract the alcohol from hand sanitizer, then he’d probably have a problem.

I think this vaporizer is absurd because the man in question is forgoing his safety to feed his drug habit. Remember all the scares over lead in children’s toys made in China. Yes, that was lead in TOYS, things children (who are reckless and like to put things in their mouthes) play with. Now, maybe it’s just me, but I would hazard to guess that the regulations are not quite so stringent for something that definitely isn’t a toy, and moreover isn’t made to, you know, prepare a substance for human consumption. If he had built some elaborate vaporizer out of things which actually aren’t dangerous if they come into contact with something you’re eating, drinking, or breathing, that might be different. It seems to me anyway, that addictions, whether psychological or physiological, generally have a component of compulsiveness.

i actually do go through a long and drawn out procedure to procure alcohol. I boil grains, add yeast,hops, and sugar at the right moments, and care for it for MONTHS. I prefer to drink it out of that specific mug. Since alcohol is legal, my efforts to create it and savor it are seen as artisan.

The idea behind the vaporizer is similar. By not actually burning something to inhale, you reduce the ash and carbon you are putting in your lungs. It preserves the taste and stuff. I probably wouldn’t use this specific system for those purposes, but I see it as a valid pursuit.

“A little smoke every now and then isn’t bad, but when you start designing special tools just to get higher (or make it easier/quicker/safer), you’ve past the line of recreation and have a serious problem.”

I guess you don’t understand that sometimes people have an interest in marijuana. Just like there are people interested in the making and tasting of wine and beer, there are people genuinely interested about marijuana. The many different strains, and their subtle differences, or the many different preparations of it. The culture, customs, and traditions of enjoying marijuana with friends. I don’t see how it is any different than someone interested in tasting beer or wine. Can’t you enjoy alcohol without being considered an alcoholic?

And a vaporizer isn’t a tool “Just to get higher” it’s a device to vaporize the active chemicals on the marijuana without burning the plant matter. It’s a different method of ingestion which has the benefit of not being smoke, which makes it safer and less harsh on the throat. It’s just an alternative to smoking.

it is typical for americans to use “an herbal” because we pronounce the word with a vowel sound in the beginning. Many pointless arguments have stemmed from this on the internet and I suspect it might eventually be the cause of the next world war.

I agree. mojo-chan. ow about ack a day start dropping the “h” on all words. Let just ope mass ysteria does’t appen. It’s really ard talking with ~20% of words starting with H. It makes it look like I need elp with my grammar. Or I’m a villian from a British police drama…

Yes “hacks” like this are IMHO do not need to be on HAD. For those that wonder. I would also like to no see the gun hacks unless it is a laser, rail, mass driver, ion, phaser, or starwars style blaster. Nerf and Airsoft are also okay of being shot by a robot.

Been coming here daily for seven years, but today’s posts have really woken me up. It’s not about hacks anymore, it’s all about which tutorial you slightly modified to make your Raspberry Pi project and like many a tech site before it, stupid COMPLETELY irrelevant drug/paraphernalia related posts like this. Yet another site I’m not coming back to.

How do you know if someone’s a pothead? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.

Full disclaimer: I hate marijuana, and save for a few rather specific medicinal usages, I have nothing but disdain for those who use it.

But seriously what is it about technology oriented sites that seem to be so outspoken about drugs, and to a lesser degree alcohol. This reminds me of that obnoxious kid from High School, I’m sure you all know him, who would brag about getting drunk or high on the weekend, when he obviously hadn’t done either. You know what’s worse than a pothead? That guy. Now, I have no doubt the poster here probably does actually use marijuana, but in any case his obvious pandering just makes it that much more pathetic. I have a theory: the reason why users of sites like Reddit for example have to mention weed in every other sentence is because they are trying to overcompensate and being “cool” per a pathetically uninformed idea of what “cool” entails. Not only is this stupid (why in the hell would you use a cheap, chinese made device, to vaporize something you’re going to inhale, that is used to MELT LEAD.) but it is also uninteresting, and more importantly: annoying. We get it, you use pot, and I bet you think that makes you cool or hip somehow, but you know what? It doesn’t. Just like the 19 year old college student who talks about that time they got “so wasted,” (because binge drinking is cool!), not-so-subtly implying you use a very widespread drug is neither funny, cool, nor original. So stop, because no one cares.

That’s just like, your opinion, man. Don’t you have anything better to do than rail against drug use, just because it’s not ‘cool’ enough for you? Ironically, everything you just said, and your ‘pathetically uninformed idea’ of coolness can be used to criticize your own posts here.

How about, it’s not hurting you, so to each their own. Yet another post that proves an *acceptance of foreign ideas* is just too hard for most people. Instead they are lazy, they let their emotions run them, spouting elitism and hatred for everything they don’t accept. Look at the bigger picture man, what does your little walled garden of coolness get us?

Nothing closed off and thought policed ends up being better for the people inside or outside, it’s historical fact. Instead of wasting your energy railing against shit, use it to widen your own perspective, undo the tribal/classist/patriotic exclusion tendencies you have.

Realize that dismissing people, their thoughts and ideas is NEVER a good thing.
It’s as simple as: give love, not hate. And if you can’t, keep it to your fucking self.

” What will you be left with? Pot heads arguing about the best way to get high.”
I doubt that — some people (myself included) aren’t hypersensitive about what other people do with their bodies. I don’t smoke pot, and the only problem I have with this post has already been brought up in the comments (Lead and other materials off-gassing).

hypersensitive? This is not about what someone chooses to do with their body, in private. It is about them doing it openly in public. There are children that read these post. They have a right to not be bombarded with yet another way to get high.

“There are children that read these post. They have a right to not be bombarded with yet another way to get high. ”
… *eye-roll*
“Think of the Children!” — Really? This is a site for *hackers* with diverse interests, it’s not Cartoon Network. Also, as far as kids go, this is far, far from some of the terrible things a child could stumble across on the internet. If a kid is online unsupervised, this post would be the least of my worries.

If you don’t want your kid to see these kinds of posts, then don’t let them visit this site. Believe it or not, having a child makes *you* responsible for their behavior, it’s not our job to parent your kids for you.

Here’s an idea: Instead of trying to shelter your son from information on the internet (which will only work temporarily anyways), maybe you should have a talk with your son, so he’s informed and can make the right decisions for himself.

this is true and it blows my mind. On a completely unrelated note though, I always enjoy when people say smoking weed has no negative side effects. YOU’RE BURNING SOMETHING AND PUTTING THAT INTO YOUR LUNGS. It doesn’t matter what it is, this alone is bad for you. I guess that’s why vaporizers were created.

Is pot harmful: yes. But just like everything else that’s bad for you, there’s continuum between potato chips and meth. As far as harm from different ways of consuming pot, vaporizing is less harmful than smoking, but probably more harmful than eating it.

Most would rather not share the roadway or workplace with someone who is impaired by using some drug or another. My experience is that a pothead is as annoying as hell, but is a hell of a lot easier to defuse so I can go back to enjoying my evening than drunks who become 10′ tall and bullet proof and try to pick a fight with anyone bigger than they to prove how tough they are. To the point I can’t have problem with this being feature here at HaD.

Yeah, I can’t recommend this hack, it is in NO WAY safe to inhale the air coming out of a reflow station, especially if it has even been used for actual reflow work. Solder or flux fumes can enter the head and condense on the walls and later be re-vaporised and inhaled. Lubricants, coatings and unknown manufacturing processes are used to build these things.
This is akin to using a butane vaporiser and then inhaling the butane fumes while trying to use it.

So “hackaday” doesn’t like posting “Computer hacking /cracking” stuff. but now we have how to build a box that can pirate anything with images of a copyrighted movie being downloaded, and now homemade drug paraphernalia. Yeah, not everything posted here is going to be some whiz-bang awesome-sauce. But I remember a time many moons ago when Hackaday would tell people they wouldn’t feature certain “hacks” because they dipped into the realm of illegal, and this wasn’t what hackaday.com was about. Pot smokers and torrent users know where to find plenty of info on their interests we don’t need to see it re-posted here.
Remove my comment if you want, ban me, whatever, it seams since the new site updates things have went downhill, and my G+ stream seams to have more relevant info in it. I mean seriously? I’ll take an x-ray baggage tear down any day over seeing someone mis-use lab equipment just to get high because they are too cheap to just go buy a lighter.

Marijuana is perfectly legal for recreational use in two states of the US and another 18 states for medical users. In 30 days Canada will be deciding about medical marijuana question for Canada is to be decided.

Just because you don’t approve, don’t rain on anyone else’s parade.

No go back and sit in the timeout chair while adults tend to things beyond the scope of your childish attitude.

Re-Read, nowhere did I say I was against Marijuana. What’s next though, HAD going to feature how to use a light bulb to smoke meth. The legality of it’s use is moot, this is not a hack, it’s not “clever”. This moron modified perfectly good equipment just to get high, does he not know what a soda can is? Apple? Aluminum foil? Does he not live next to a head shop? Lets say no, so what makes this HAD worthy? point out to me where you see anything here that says “Wow, guys lets post this on our page cause this guys got a great idea”

Also don’t forget to grace the other 90+ posts of the same effect with your amazing facts that absolutely belong on and pertain to the content of this site.

I never claimed you were against MJ. I said you don’t approve of this use, which is a HACK, BTW, in case you missed that part. The part about HACKing something to perform differently or to perform a task for which it wasn’t designed.

Also, unless you want to suck up plenty of plastic fumes, it’s not a good idea to use aluminum beverage cans as make-do pipes. They are coated with plastic on the inside to prevent the acids from reacting with the aluminum.

So you can have the time out chair all to yourself. If you don’t approve of a HACK, then no one is forcing you to make comments on it. If you have some useful criticism, some cool way to make it even better, than feel free to chime in and bask in the glow of everyone’s appreciation.

If you feel strongly enough to comment negatively because you don’t consider something a HACK, then drag yourself to the forum and bring up the topic there.

HAHAHA, love you keyboard cowboys. pull out the little pieces you can argue against and just negate the rest. Have fun I imagine more comments are coming you’ll need to attend to.

Make it better? How about using a single piece instead of jb welding pieces together? How about using something that gets above 180c since that is the bottom line of vaporization?
How about building an induction coil from a transformer and using 304 or 316 ss tubing (food grade, easily found as scrap at most fab shops) around the coil with a ss screen to remove any toxins this guys pumping into the bag?

on second hand, here you have the timeout chair. because your replies hold absolutely no support for this guys “hack” just arguing. And we could go back and forth all day long, but I have thing less important to do.